Birthday news:Stephen Crichton announce his birthday today with a giveaway ……
A week after being labelled fragile in his team’s heavy loss to the Storm, Cronulla’s Nicho Hynes proved it would take more than losing an Origin jersey to break him.
Despite a shaky start from the Sharks halfback, which included a kick out on the full and a forward pass, Hynes controlled the tempo of the game and led his team to a 38-point victory over the Bulldogs.
was an anxious opening five minutes for the sold-out Cronulla crowd, with a handful of early errors raising questions about Hynes’ confidence. But when the halfback scooped up a grubber at Cronulla’s end and ran the ball 80 metres, falling just short of the Bulldogs’ line, Hynes proved he had his mojo back.
“He’s really resilient as a person. Obviously, all of us were disappointed with our performance last week. I don’t think one person could say that they played well against Melbourne,” said Sharks co-captain Dale Finucane.
“To be able to bounce back, and what he’s [Hynes] been through with missing out on selection for Origin II, it’s no secret that he would be disappointed with that.
But to be able to bounce and steer our team around tonight, be tough where he needed to but also get our forwards the points on the field and run our structures, I thought he did that really well for us.”
he Sharks piled on 30 points in the first half, and a charging run from Thomas Hazelton began the second-term onslaught just 30 seconds after he stepped onto the field.
After one try, 78 run metres and six tackle breaks, Hazelton was given a farewell fit for a king, with the 11,000-strong crowd cheering him off the field after a solid 18-minute stint.
On his 27th birthday, Hynes proved tricky for the Bulldogs and ran deep into their line before shifting the ball out to the wings – a play which handed Briton Nikora a try in his 100th game for Cronulla.
